News & Notes -- 5/25/13

News & Notes is a weekly Saturday post featuring book- and publishing-related news, links to interesting articles and opinion pieces, giveaways on this and other blogs, and other cool stuff.

Books & Ebooks in the News:

• Amazon plans to publish fanfic -- and pay royalties to both the original rights holder and the fanfic author.  (this blog) The announcement came on Wednesday, and it's been drawing a lot of attention. Nate Hoffelder and Tobias Buckell have some thought on how it might affect media in-house publishers and professional writers of tie-ins.
•  Lydia Davis wins the Man Booker Prize. (themanbookerprize.com)
• "Penguin Settles for $75 Million in Ebook Pricing Suit" (GalleyCat)
• "Amazon Fights to Keep Secrets in Ebook Trial" (Andrew Albanese, Publishers Weekly) 
• "Are they in or out? Microsoft may not purchase Nook after all" (Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times, Books section) Citing an anonymous source, Insider Monkey reports that Microsoft isn't planning to buy Nook Media after all.  This directly contradicts the documents TechCrunch allegedly acquired last week.  I'd say the jury is still out.  As far as I can tell, there has been no official confirmation or denial from either Microsoft or Barnes & Noble, which may mean nothing or quite a lot.  
• Open Road will publish a newly-discovered novel by Pearl S. Buck, entitled The Eternal Wonder.  It will be available as an ebook only, at least initially. (GalleyCat)

• Patrons are rallying to stop a proposed $47 million cut in the NY Public Library budget. (GalleyCat)

 

Worth Reading:

• You may already have heard that author Iain Banks is seriously ill. He has late-stage gall bladder cancer, and has been given less than a year to live. A website called Banksophilia - Friends of Iain Banks has been set up for updates and for fans to sign a guestbook and leave messages. Mr. Banks is dealing with his condition with humor and grace, and is grateful for the outpouring of support he has received.
• "Good Writing vs. Talented Writing" (Maria Popova, Brain Pickings)
• "How Google+ is pushing its way into all Google products" (Heather Kelly, CNN)  Google doesn't seem to get the idea that some people want or need to keep more than one online identity.  For instance, you might want to keep your professional and hobby-blogging identities separate.  But Google is making that harder and harder to do. 
• This has nothing to do with books, but it's awesome anyway.  A Reddit user took a photo of a young Sikh woman who happens to have facial hair, and posted it to /r/Funny.  Instead of getting angry, the young woman posted a lovely response explaining her faith and her decision not to remove her facial hair.  And then the unheard-of happened: the original poster apologized.  Sincerely.  You can see the photo and read both posts here.

Free & Bargain books:

•  Remember that the Sync free audiobook downloads begin May 30!  From May 30 to June 5, you can download Of Poseidon by Anna Banks (read by Rebecca Gibel) and Shakespeare's Shakespeare's The Tempest (performed by a full BBC Radio cast.)  You will need to download the Overdrive Media Console to be able to download the audiobooks.
• The first two ebooks in Sherryl Woods' new Ocean Breeze series, Sand Castle Bay and Wind Chime Point, are available for $1.99 each at Amazon and Google Play.  I've read them (reviews to come!) and they are well-written, warm, small-town romances.  
• Sand Castle Bay:  Amazon         Google
• Wind Chime Point:  Amazon          Google

For Writers and Bloggers:

Neil Gaiman's writing advice, from Shared Worlds' website

•  When you need a hand (or just a little advice): Shared Worlds, a writers camp for teen writers of fantasy, asked a number of fantasy authors to "write advice on their own hands and send us a picture."  
• "What You Need to Know About Piracy" (Claire Ryan, raynfall.com)  OK, she's got at least one logical fallacy and I think she's wrong about whether quoting a paragraph or two of a book in a blog post (with proper attribution) is a copyright violation (I think it falls under "fair use".)  But on the whole, she is right on the money.  

Really Cool:  

• For her Sorted Books project, Nina Katchedourian creates short, often pointed poems by arranging book spines or, occasionally, covers.  You can see more of her poems at the previous link, and in this post on i09.

Awesome lists:

• "13 Fantasy Novels That Are Good Despite Their Covers" (BuzzFeed)  Worth looking at not only for the covers (some of which aren't that bad) as for the descriptions of what the cover leads you to expect -- for the cover above, "A fashion show is ruined when an old homeless man wanders onto the catwalk." LOL!
  
  

I'm always on the lookout for interesting articles, lists, and links for News & Notes, so please let me know if you see (or write!) anything that might be good for this feature.  You can leave me a comment or send me an email -- my address is on the About/Review Policy/Contact page.

Amazon to publish fanfic

Amazon plans to publish fanfic -- and pay royalties to both the original rights holder and the fanfic author.  The platform is called Kindle Worlds, and they'll be kicking it off with stories from established authors like Barbara Freethy and Trish Milburn.  Only worlds for which Amazon has secured a license will be eligible.  As of the original announcement, that includes only Warner Bros. Television Group's "Gossip Girls", "Pretty Little Liars", and "Vampire Diaries" book/TV series.  Amazon is pursuing additional licenses as well.  The program will publish fan fiction novels, novellas, and even short stories.

I have really mixed feelings about this whole idea.  On the one hand, there is some terrific writing in the fanfic field (as well as stuff that is hilariously awful.)  It would be nice if people who put that much talent, energy, and passion into their work could actually profit from it.  On the other hand, as author Jim Hines mentions in a recent blog post, there's a prevailing mentality in the fanfic community that you don't do it for money.  My daughter, who sometimes writes fanfic, agrees that it is indeed something you do out of love, or as a way of practicing your writing skills -- often both. 

I also doubt there are many authors will be willing to let other people make money from the worlds they have so painstakingly created.  I think we're a lot more likely to see licenses for "worlds" owned by film and television studios (and written either for-hire or by multiple authors) than for those based on the work of a single author, especially if that author is still living.  In other words, Amazon might get licenses for Firefly or Battlestar Galactica or even House, but probably not for something like J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series.  Although it's true that Rowling is more supportive of fanfic than many authors, she has not been tolerant of anyone trying to profit from her work.  On the other hand, Sara Shepard, who writes the Pretty Little Liars books, is excited to have fans playing in her world. (Publishers Weekly)   Even if only a small percentage of authors and rights holders agree to license their worlds, it looks like there will be plenty of worlds for fanfic writers to play around in.

I'm actually surprised no one has thought of doing this sort of thing before. Forbes points out that fanfic has been around since at least the 1960s and Star Trek. "Content creators have had half a century to understand fanfic and do something constructive with it, but yet it’s Amazon who are making the move to woo fanfic writers." (Suw Charman-Anderson, Forbes)  Once again, Amazon saw and seized an opportunity that everyone else was ignoring because it's never been done.

Of course, there's probably a catch to Kindle Worlds.  Actually, there's more than one (quotes taken from Amazon's page for authors): 

• The original rights holder will provide "Content Guidelines" which you have to follow for your story to be eligible.  Those guidelines prohibit crossover stories, where characters or ideas from one show or book series turn up in another.  They also prohibit porn "or offensive depictions of graphic sexual acts", but there's no indication of what Amazon would consider offensive, which leaves authors in an awkward position (no pun intended) when writing about relationships -- what's acceptable and what's not?
• "Amazon Publishing will acquire all rights to your new stories, including global publication rights, for the term of copyright."  That means that you can't then turn around, remove the fanfic elements from your story, and sell or self-publish it as an original story (in other words, your story can't become the next Shades of Gray.)  And "life of the copyright" is an awfully long time: the author's lifetime plus 70 years. 
• "... you are granting Amazon Publishing an exclusive license to the story and all the original elements you include in that story. This means that your story and all the new elements must stay within the applicable World. We will allow Kindle Worlds authors to build on each other's ideas and elements. We will also give the World Licensor a license to use your new elements and incorporate them into other works without further compensation to you."  So if you come up with a really cool new device (like the Doctor's sonic screwdriver, but your own invention), you can't use it outside the "World" for which you created it.  And if the license holder decides to use a character or element you created, you get no compensation.  That means your character could show up in the "official" books or the show, and you won't get a cent.
• Amazon gets to set the price, which is unlikely to exceed $3.99 even for a novel.  Of course, some novels sell quite well at $3.99, but when you self-publish a novel for Kindle and sell it at $3.99, you get 70% royalties.  For works of over 10,000 words, you'll only get 35%, because of course the original rights holder also gets a cut.  And the royalties are lower for stories priced at $0.99, at 20%.
• It's your responsibility to make sure your "content doesn't violate laws or copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity, or other rights."  Since most fanfic authors don't have agents and aren't necessarily up on copyright law or even trademarks, this one could potentially come back and bite you.
• And of course, at present these works will only be available in Kindle format, which means you'll need a Kindle or a device with a Kindle app to read them... and you'll probably have to submit your works formatted for Kindle.

Author John Scalzi posted his thoughts on the implications in terms of authors' rights.  He worries about some of the same points, and goes into more detail.  You might also like to read the articles at GalleyCat, Forbes, and Publishers Weekly.